Character sketches: Cmdr William 'Husher' Adama
by lonaj
Summary: (BSG03) Character study of Commander Adama


Commander William "Husher"* Adama

Commander Adama stands with his knees flexed and his hands knotted behind him halfway between the draedus console and tactical display.  He has just left the officers' wardroom where Laura Roslin has set up a temporary Presidential headquarters.  Until further notice Galactica's officers will eat on the run, so lending her the wardroom is no great sacrifice of space.

Roslin's parting words roil in Adama's brain.  She said, "We have to start making babies."  As if there were no war to fight.  As if cute, soft babies could be a battle strategy.  What else could you expect from a schoolteacher?  If Adama weren't so angry, he'd laugh.

Damned bureaucrat.  For ten years the Senate cut back the military budget, pressuring Fleet's top brass to trim personnel and to automate.  The Senate had loved building gigantic new battlestars to impress voters.  To pay for them it decommissioned almost everything else, from the 5-cannon gunships so important in the last war to 60-gun firing platforms that should have been the battlestars' protective shield.  From five thousand odd ships the Fleet had gone to two hundred forty.  They didn't even have a decent intelligence service.  No one had known where the Cylons went and no one had really cared, not even those who should.  There had been no excuse for that.

According to Doctor Baltar, poison pill Cylon computer programming killed all of the Senate's shiny new battlestars and there'd been no other ships of consequence to pick up the fight.  As far as Adama's concerned, tight-fisted Colonial bureaucrats caused this war and guaranteed the destruction of their race.

Adama watches his son pace the Combat Information Center deck.  Thinking himself unobserved, Lee's head is down and his steps heavy and rocking.  He still wears a shiny, dark green combat suit with the white, red and black Viper patch on his right shoulder.  The suit must be borrowed as a black and gold BSG 75 patch shines on the left.  Lee's own gear would have Columbia insignia since he's on Galactica only by accident of war.

If Lee had been someone else's son, Adama would have ordered him to take five and a cigar.  He radiates nervous tension like a draedus antenna radiates subspace waves.  He's been running at full tilt for days.  Lee never admits weakness to his father so Adama says nothing.

Yesterday Lee saved 50,000 lives and brought them to his father at Ragnarok.  If what Roslin says is true -- that no one else lives -- Lee is the savior of all humanity.  Perhaps if they survive, Lee's name will be added to the sacred pantheon of Lords and Adama will be the father of a god.

Adama and Lee listen -- the whole CIC listens – while a rectangular box squawks and Starbuck tells Colonel Tigh what she has found above Ragnarok's green and glowing atmosphere.  It is death, Cylon death.  "… two base stars with ten fighter squadrons and two recon. detachments."  Static makes Kara's voice growl.  "From the looks of things, they're waiting for us to come out to them."

Lee looks at the speaker overhead as though demanding better news.  As CAG, Lee sent his best pilot Kara on this recon.  That must have been a hard choice for him, he loves her so.  It is hard on Adama too.  But Adama asks himself, what do I have to complain about?  With all the billions dead, I have Kara and I have my son.  When the Kobol Lords sent Adama's son back to him, he vowed to repay the favor.

Centuries ago the Lords brought six thousand families to the twelve suns of the Central Cluster.  The Scrolls say they ran from a dragon.  Secular historians think they fled war.  Now the Twelve Colonies have come back full circle to the beginning … or is it the beginning of the end?

With the Galactica armed and repaired, Adama had hoped to wage a running war, FTL jumping across Colonial space like a flat stone skipping across a pond.  Hardly stand-up fighting, but they'd still be waging war with some hope of victory as long as the Galactica held together.  The two Cylon base stars shot that plan to far Canceron.

Adama orders Starbuck home.  It is time to formulate a new strategy.

Recollecting his heated, hasty words to Roslin with a twinge of regret, "You can run if you like, but this ship will stand and it will fight," Adama turns to tactical where Colonel Tigh studies their position.  Tigh wants an upfront fight but he'll back Adama no matter what.  He always has.

"Captain," Adama calls Lee to join them.  Lee spent the last two days gathering his civilian flotilla and knows best their capabilities.  And he's also CAG.  Lee's predecessor Rip Spencer was an older, more experienced man but Lee is up to the responsibility.  He's already shown that.

Adama also tells Lieutenant Gaeta to stay and the young lieu's dark sleek head turns back.  Although untried, Gaeta has kept his head together well these past few days and he's a damned fine navigator, space normal, warped or FTL.  Galactica sings under his touch like a woman with her lover.  Best of all Gaeta works well with Tigh.

Gaeta and Adama stand up high by the schematic, Lee and Tigh stand below.

"How the hell did they find us?" Tigh asks.  He likes his answers clear and quick.

"It doesn't really matter, they've got us," Adama tells him, keeping the focus on the problem at hand.  It's not time for a witch hunt.  That will come soon enough.

Lieutenant Gaeta asks why the Cylons don't brave the electromagnetic storm and attack them here anchored to the supply depot.  Tigh explains the simple logic of resource conservation, which holds true even for robots.  The Cylons don't come in because the Galactica eventually will come out.

Adama is not really listening since he has already made a decision.  Humanity has one battlestar left and he'll not waste it on a hopeless fight.  "I'm not going to play their game," he says.  "I'm not going try to go out there and fight them."

Adama's precious worn-out 50-year-old copy of Dash's _Star War Strategies _advises an FTL retreat when faced with overwhelming odds.  Adama has never commanded a battlestar in time of war, but for two years he piloted Vipers off the Galactica under Dash.  The old man's favored strategy had been a hard Air Group hit followed by a randomly chosen FTL jump.  "Hit 'em and disappear," Dash had always said.  But then he'd also continue, "If you can't hit today, disappear and hit tomorrow.  You can't hit anything when you're dead."

Although Adama knows the answer, he asks, "Can we plot a jump from inside the storm?"

Tigh confirms Adama's opinion.  "With all this e.m. interference mucking up the FTL fix?"

Adama's team continues to chew over the possibilities, but he only gives them half his ear.

A civilian in CIC has caught Adama's eye.  Laura Roslin's tall curly-haired young aide walks past tactical and the draedus to Specialist Dualla's station.  Over the equipment console the boy smiles a greeting, and Dee's face lights up with surprise and shy admiration.  Adama wonders when and how the two youngsters met.  Slender and beautiful, they are like Geminon gazelles, and their children will be as fawns.

Lee, Tigh and Gaeta's discussion arrives at the problem of the civilian fleet.  Lee has saved the civvies twice already, and he's determined they jump FTL with Galactica.  He's right, Adama thinks.  If the Galactica escapes, the Cylons will ram nuke-armed drones down Ragnarok's throat to clean up anything left behind.  That's what he would do.

The sweet tête-à-tête across the room between Dee and Roslin's aide fills Adama's eyes.  They are little more than children, and two days ago they had their whole lives ahead of them.  Now they may not even have tomorrow.  Adama has never felt so old.

Lee begins, "We pick a jump spot far enough outside the combat zone …"

Tigh breaks in, "What the hell is outside the combat zone at this point?"

This argument can go nowhere.  President Roslin's words come out of Adama's mouth.  "They'd better start having babies."

That stops Lee and Tigh cold.  Turning to follow Adama's look, they see nothing.

Tigh asks, "Is that an order?"  He cannot track Adama's train of thought.  It is such an odd thing for a battlestar commander to say in time of war.

Adama tells him, "It may be before too long."  Which is the truth.  Tigh will understand soon enough.  From the look on Lee's face, he already does.

Adama continues with the plan he has decided on.  "Okay, we're going to take the civilians with us.  We're going leave this solar system and we're not going to come back."  If the Lords of Kobol did it once, Adama thinks, so can we.  Gods are made not born.

"We're running," Tigh says, always the master of the obvious.

Again Adama quotes President Roslin.  "This war is over.  We lost."  Sometime soon Adama will apologize to the President for his arrogance.

Lee says, "My father's right.  It's time for us to get out of here."

Lee called Adama "father."  Not "commander" or "sir."  It is a slip of discipline, but Adama softly smiles.  It is good to be called father again.  Something has changed between Adama and his son, something good.

Lee may like where they're going, the Prolnar sector, the traditional route of the Lords.  It's better mapped than other directions due to public curiosity.  And since it's closer to the galactic rim, the stars will be far apart.  Those enormous two and three light year stretches will make good places to hide a fleet of forty or fifty odd ships.

There is, however, one drawback as Tigh observes.  "That's way past the red line."  Prolnar is dangerously far from Ragnarok for a single jump, completely across Colonial space as well as the first Great Interstellar Drift, a band of galactic gas that paints pink across Leonid's southern winter sky and brings in the tourists … used to bring in the tourists.

Adama tells Gaeta to begin the calculations.  By himself.  They have not dealt with the issue of Cylon spies.  Adama is sure of Gaeta, Tigh and his own son, but no one else must know their goal until the last possible second.  Gaeta is overwhelmed but confident in his abilities.  He goes quickly, glancing overhead as he walks, undoubtedly thinking of the waiting Cylons.

Turning to the tall green and glass schematic, Adama outlines his strategy and the Galactica's next few hours for Lee and Tigh.  "This is a bad tactical situation.  We'll pull the Galactica out five klicks.  The civilians will come out behind us, cross the threshold and make the jump while we hold off the Cylons."  As Adama speaks, his arm travels his proposed line of attack.  He looks back at Lee.  This is the hardest part of the whole plan.  After the Vipers go out to cover Galatica, they must return under fire.  Adama's voice drops until he is almost whispering.  "Once the civilians have made the jump, every fighter is to make an immediate combat landing.  We won't have much time."

Lee nods.  His face is tight, his motions jerky.  Adama can see the adrenalin already pumping through the young veins.  "I'll tell them."

Adama wishes he could keep Lee safe, but all he can do is tell him to come home.  Focused on his son, Adama says, "I want all my pilots to return.  Do you understand?"

Lee's eyes fall before the intensity of Adama's look.  "Yes, sir.  I do."

Like Gaeta, Lee leaves the CIC double time.  He has Vipers to arm and fuel as well as pilots to meet and brief.  Adama watches him go, his heart unexpectedly full of longing.  They've had so little time.

Tigh still stands below the tactical table, full of curiosity.  "So can I ask what changed your mind?"

"You can ask," is all Adama will say.  Confronted with that kind of stonewalling, Tigh knows better than to press for more and, Lords bless his solid brass soul, he turns to other necessary business.

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* There seems to be confusion about Commander Adama's old call sign, whether it's Husher or Husker.  In the first half of the mini-series, there is a very clear shot of the nameplate on the side of Adama's old Viper.  It shows the name of HUSHER.  I am pretty sure the second "H" is NOT a stylized "K" so I'm going with Husher, at least until the truth comes out.  The word "hush" has interesting story-writing possibilities.  When I think of "husk," I get all confused with seeds, corn on the cob, deep-chested guys, bad colds and fluffy black and white sled dogs.

Please don't get me wrong.  I like the word husk just fine (Go Dawgs!), but I like Husher for Adama until I'm proven wrong.

You guys are a tough audience. :)


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